Timothy Glennon

“Before the Spanish invasion in 1524 and independence from Spain in 1821, no nation called Guatemala existed.”
― Greg Grandin, The Guatemala Reader: History, Culture, Politics

“I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavor to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“his splendid novel A Ship Made of Paper, Scott Spencer”
― Joe McGinniss, Never Enough

“various Belgian policemen and security officers - nominally under the command of Tshombe but, in reality, following orders from Brussels - had, on the night of 17 January 1961, driven Lumumba from the villa where he had been taken to rendezvous with a firing squad of local Katangan soldiers about forty-five minutes’ drive from the airport. Lumumba, his face battered almost beyond recognition and his clothes spattered with blood, was made to stand against a large anthill illuminated by the headlights of two cars. He was then executed by firing squad and his body buried in a shallow grave. Fearful the grave might be discovered and turned into a shrine, the Belgians and their Katangan stooges later moved to erase all traces of the Congo’s elected leader. The day after the execution, the corpse was exhumed and driven deeper into the Katangan bush, where it was reburied in another shallow grave until arrangements could be made to get rid of it once and for all. Under cover of darkness on 22 January 1961 two Belgian brothers, with connections to the Belgian security forces, returned and exhumed the body for a second time. They used a hacksaw and an axe to dismember the decomposing corpse, before dissolving the remains in a 200-litre petrol drum filled with sulphuric acid taken from a nearby copper-processing plant. One of the brothers later admitted he used pliers to remove two of Lumumba’s teeth as souvenirs.”
― Tim Butcher, Blood River: The Terrifying Journey through the World's Most Dangerous Country